What is a Solar Battery?

When taking steps to improve your home’s EPC rating and become more efficient, you may find yourself looking for renewable methods to power your home, inevitably stumbling across solar panels. Solar panels are a brilliant solution to make your home green, by generating your own electricity and saving on energy bills. However, are you aware that you can elevate the benefits of solar panels by installing Solar Batteries?

Read on to discover the ins and outs of solar batteries, from how they work, what size battery your property would require, and the pros and cons. Aiding you in coming to your own conclusion of whether they’re worth investing in for your property.

What is a Solar Battery?

Solar Batteries are as simple as they sound, they provide you with the ability to temporarily store electricity generated by solar panels on your property and release it to be used when it’s needed. Designed to operate alongside solar panels, solar batteries help you further enhance your energy efficiency, by generating green energy whilst cutting down on energy bills.

Solar batteries come in all different shapes and sizes, optimised for different purposes, so whether it’s a small home or industrial warehouse, you’re guaranteed to find the right option for your property.

How Solar Batteries Work

On those long summer days when the sun is shining strong, your solar panels will keep working hard to generate electricity, even when you’re not in to use it. It would seem like such a shame to let all this valuable energy go to waste and this is where Solar batteries make their worth. Solar Batteries harness the power generated by your Solar Panels and store it until a time when you need it, meaning that even hours after the sun has gone down, you can still use the energy generated by your Panels, before needing to purchase electricity from the grid.

This ‘Save for later’ method is how solar panels and batteries can help you save on your energy bills, by generating power at a time when you don’t need it, and storing it to be used once you’re in demand of it.

But that’s not all, in the occasion that you don’t use the energy generated by your panels and stored in your batteries, you can sell this surplus power back to the grid as part of the government-backed Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) program.

What size battery do I need?

Solar Battery sizes are rated in kWh (Kilowatts-Hour), and for domestic use in the UK, solar battery size ranges from around 2.4kWh to 15kWh, with most common batteries being between 5kWh to 10kWh. The size battery you need comes down to several factors. You should consider the size of your home or business, the number of occupants, your energy usage, and your solar panel capacity.

When finding the best solar battery for your home, you first want to find out your average usage of electricity, for the average home in the UK, this is around 8kWh per day. The battery you will need won’t have to cover all your usage, as during the day your solar panels will power your home directly, so you only need a few kWh to support you once the sun has gone down.

For most homes in the UK, a 5kWh battery is a suitable size battery, but you may get away with smaller, or be in demand of more, depending on the number of occupants in your home. See below a rough guide of what size battery may suit your property.

Weighing up the Pros and Cons

When thinking about installing solar batteries, it’s crucial to consider both the pros and cons to help you come to your conclusion of whether they’re worth it for your home.

Solar batteries can be an excellent choice to help boost your home’s sustainability providing you with the opportunity of becoming less dependent on the grid and cutting down on energy bills. However, this comes at a cost, batteries can be expensive to purchase and install, and will also need replacing every so often. This is typically between 5 and 15 years, with several factors having an effect on the lifetime you will get out of them. Installing solar batteries also reduces the amount of surplus power you sell back to the grid.

Key Takeaways

In Conclusion, Solar batteries have the potential to be a valuable addition to your home, providing a solution to enhance and really get the most out of your Solar Panels. If energy independence and efficiency are your goals, solar batteries could be a worthwhile investment for you.

• Solar Batteries store energy generated during the day, then use this to power your home before taking power from the grid.
• They help reduce your reliance on the grid, lower energy bills and improve your home’s sustainability.
• They come at a high upfront cost and have a limited lifespan, so it’s important to weigh the long-term savings against the initial investment.

By exploring renewable energy solutions for your home, you contribute to a greener environment.